Rolando Masferrer

Rolando Arcadio Masferrer Rojas (1918-31 October 1975) was a Cuban exile leader and anti-Fidel Castro militia leader. Masferrer was known to be a savage and corrupt criminal who extorted money from the very Cuban exile community which he claimed that he was protecting, and he was killed in a car bombing in Miami by his fellow counter-revolutionaries in 1975.

Biography
Rolando Arcadio Masferrer Rojas was born in Holguin, Oriente Province, Cuba in 1918, and he was a member of the Young Cuba organization as a teenager before joining the Communist Party of Cuba and fighting in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. However, he became a rival of Fidel Castro in the feuds of the left-wing "action groups" during the late 1940s, despite fighting alongside him in a 1947 expedition to overthrow Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. In 1949, he was elected to the House of Representatives, and he became a staunch supporter of Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, forming the Los Tigres paramilitary group to silence his critics. He was accused of 2,000 killings, and, during his operations in the Sierra Maestra, he planned to buy up land and divide it among guajiros who informed on Castro. On 9 January 1959, he fled to Florida with $10 million after Castro took over the Cuban government, and he befriended Mafia bosses such as Santo Trafficante and Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. He extorted money from the Cuban exile community in Florida to set up the 30th of November counter-revolutionary group, and Hoffa gave him $50,000 to set up a team to assassinate Castro. In December 1960, he and 50 men polished their killing skills at Howard Hughes' ranch, and he also became an associate of the El Tiempo newspaper in New York City. In 1961, he met with President John F. Kennedy, who disliked Masferrer's radical and fanatical personality. During the 1960s, he stockpiled weapons for an invasion of Haiti, hoping to have a base from which he could attack Cuba free of US law. On 31 October 1975, he was killed in a car bombing in Miami, as his extortion activities and unfulfilled promises had prevented the counter-revolutionaries from forming a united front.